The Long Swell

Floods

Four river basins measured against their own record.

Each piece compares one basin's rainfall with the same calendar fortnight in every year since 2000, and states what it could not see alongside what it could.

This channel measures rainfall. It does not measure flooding.Rain gauges and satellites can say how much fell and how that compares with the same fortnight in every year since 2000. Neither says whether a river left its bed, whether anyone was displaced, or whether a road is under water. Where we have checked a gauge, the page says what it read. Where we have not, the page says that instead of implying it.

Every basin we have measured

Flood extent has not been assessed on any piece here. The satellite that would answer it needs a baseline per basin before it can say whether standing water is unusual, and those baselines do not exist yet. Every page says so on its own face.

An ordinary total is not evidence that nothing happened. The instrument accumulates over a fortnight and severely under-reads rain that falls in a few hours, which is the rain that floods. Each page carries its own reading of how concentrated its fortnight was.

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